So for the past month,
We have been establishing mindfulness in these morning practice sessions.
And I've loosely been using the acronym RAIN as a technique for developing and deepening our awareness practice.
So RAIN,
For those of you who are not familiar with this term,
Was developed by meditation teacher Michelle O'Donnell and popularized by the teacher Tara Brock.
And this acronym RAIN is for recognize,
Allow,
Investigate,
And non-identify.
Sometimes the N in RAIN is also seen as nurture,
And we'll explore that on Thursday.
So we talked about recognition.
Recognition is the way in which we know what is happening,
What is going on.
Just the simplest knowledge of recognition,
What's occurring.
You recognize that you're restless or you're tense,
You're anxious,
You're distracted.
You recognize there's pain in the body.
We recognize it.
And the A in RAIN is to allow,
To allow those experiences to not interfere with them.
So I really like this term non-interference,
Allowing them to be as they are,
Like being still in the body.
That's our commitment as we practice.
And then letting all the waves arise and pass without getting sucked into them,
Not adding anything to it,
Not adding a story,
Not adding your preferences,
Simply letting what arises be there and then also dissipate.
And this takes a lot of practice.
The practice of coming back again and again,
Coming back to the still body,
Back to the breath in the belly.
This repetition,
Sometimes it feels like reps in a gym,
You know,
When you go to the gym and work out.
It takes effort,
But it's part of establishing mindfulness.
It really is this repetition.
And then the I in RAIN is for investigation.
And this is where I think some confusion can creep into the practice because investigation in our culture,
Like it's the cultural understanding.
It's like,
We're going to investigate,
We're going to do some digging,
We're going to research it.
There's this quality of figuring it out.
But investigation in meditation practice is not that.
We're not performing some self analysis.
I kind of think that investigation isn't really the best word because in our conditioning,
In our cultural conditioning,
It's kind of like the investigation is to go back into the mind and think things through.
So it's more like in our practice,
It's more like sort of the question,
What is this?
What is this?
And again,
Careful not to go and analyze.
So if we're recognizing and allowing our body in its stillness and in our breath to come and go and restlessness or just rumination appears in the mind and the body,
This is what's arising.
Like,
This is what we're seeing.
What is this?
Oh,
It's restlessness.
That's it.
Or oh,
It's rumination.
That's it.
As soon as we add,
Because there's restlessness because or there's rumination because what happens is then we're then we're in the story.
Then we're feeding the story.
Now we're investigating the story because of this,
My mind,
I am restless because of all of these other things that are happening in my life,
The stories of my life,
The situations,
The circumstances,
But what is arising is restlessness.
It feels like what,
What does it feel like?
We don't answer the question with words like an understanding,
But rather it's a movement of opening and being more receptive,
More attentive to the felt sense of restlessness itself to let it land fully and register in the body.
Investigation has also been described as like wonder.
I'm like,
Huh,
Just this receptivity.
This is the full extent of the restless body.
When we shift into being interested,
Then it becomes a practice.
So in that moment,
What is this?
How is it manifesting in the body?
Then it becomes a practice.
So investigation is kind of seeing the details of it,
The details of what's happening,
Of what we're recognizing.
So then we go back to our,
Right?
We recognize and then seeing the details.
So in this rain analogy,
We're often practicing with the first two,
You know,
We recognize and we don't interfere.
We allow it.
And this is the foundation of mindfulness,
The foundational aspects of establishing mindfulness.
It's the beginning.
And we're always all beginners,
By the way,
The clear,
The mindfulness becomes the clear,
The awareness is established in the present moment.
The more that we start seeing each thing in and of itself.
It's kind of like if we were walking down the sidewalk.
So instead of just seeing,
You know,
The concrete,
We start to notice the cracks in the sidewalk and see the little grasses that are growing up in between the gaps.
Like there's a greater and greater resolution in experience.
That's what's meant by investigation.
So for example,
I might be sitting and I'm uncomfortable in my body and the stillness of my body as I meditate.
And so my mind keeps wandering off.
And the story might be something like,
This is just a bad day to meditate.
I shouldn't have sat down to meditate.
I have so many things that I've got going on.
So that's very far removed from what's really taking place,
The details in the moment,
Right?
So instead of being aware to see and differentiate that this is just uncomfortable,
My mind,
It starts making up stories in a split second,
In a split second about how this is just not a good day,
That I should just get up.
And honestly,
That's happened.
It might happen to you as well.
So that's why I share it.
So with practice,
We recognize that there is discomfort.
And then breathing in,
Breathing out.
This is the way that I don't interfere with it.
I come back to the breath.
I don't interfere with it by just let me drop into my belly and feel that space that's there.
That silence that's there.
There's how the allowing happens.
And then I get to start to see the details of it.
And the details are not a judgment.
Details are just seeing clearly what's there.
And restlessness,
There's some discomfort with it.
It's not comfortable,
But it comes and it goes.
I don't have to make it a problem.
I just see discomfort,
Restlessness,
And this movement,
This naming practice is very powerful because we begin to able,
It enables us to make distinctions,
To see clearly the different qualities of our attention,
The different qualities of our mind.
And to keep it really simple,
It's the investigation is we start to feel and see and sense the quality of what we're seeing,
Of what the mind is doing.
We start to differentiate between the qualities of stress and the qualities of ease,
Like the qualities of pleasantness,
Which we start to cling to,
That happens,
Versus the qualities of unpleasantness,
Which become more of this thing that we want to push away.
We can feel that movement in the body.
We become more sensitive to this,
This fluctuation of the mind.
And the question,
The investigative quality is what is this?
What is this like?
So that's the encouragement as we,
If we use this analogy and this analogy works for us,
This RAIN acronym,
The quality of investigation is what is this?
That's what I suggest.
Recognize,
Allow,
And feel your way into what it's like,
Whatever it is that's arising.
What is this like in the body?
What is this like in the mind?
Instantly or repetitively disentangling from the story and just going into the felt sense.
Bhikkhu Bodhi,
Who is a wonderful translator in this tradition and wrote a lovely book called The Noble Eightfold Path,
The Way to End Suffering.
This is in his book.
He wrote,
The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding.
Real renunciation is not a matter of compelling ourselves to give up things still inwardly cherished but in changing our perspective on them so that they no longer bind us.
When we understand the nature of desire,
When we investigate it closely with our keen attention,
Again,
The felt sense,
Desire falls away by itself without need for struggle.
The tool the Buddha holds out to free the mind from desire is understanding.
So thank you for your consideration and your attention.
